Larry Fedora and his Tar Heels made a positive first impression. But now what do they do for an encore?

Regardless of which ACC school you root for, there’s a good chance your favorite football team’s coach said one of the following during his press conference this week:

“You’re never as good as you think you look when you win and you’re never as bad as think you look when you lose.” (Usually uttered by a coach whose team just scored an impressive victory).

Or “A team’s greatest improvement comes between the first and second week of the season. (Usually uttered by a coach whose team either lost or didn’t look good in squeaking out an opening game win).

Both comments are tired old clichés, of course. But like most clichés, both have an element of truth to them.

So while the temptation may be great to react to this weekend’s results with knee jerk proclamations – both good and bad – the study sample is still far too small to start reassessing the preseason perceptions we formed before anyone actually got out onto the field and started playing.

Yes, some generalizations can be already made.

Virginia Tech is already the clear frontrunner in the Coastal Division after its overtime win against Georgia Tech on Monday. Clemson showed the world that it has a lot more offensive weapons in its arsenal other than ACC preseason Player of the Year Sammy Watkins while on the flip side, Maryland is as offensively challenged as advertised after struggling to a 7-6 win against William & Mary.

At the same time, though, all 12 league schools – like everyone else in college football at this time of the year – remain a work in progress.

That includes both North Carolina and N.C. State, whose opening week performances elicited far different social media reactions from their respective fan bases.

Needless to say, anxious Tar Heels fans were more than just mildly excited about new coach Larry Fedora’s debut against Elon, a 62-0 massacre that showed off both the explosive potential of his spread offense and the playmaking possibilities of a rebuilt 4-2-5 hybrid defense.

It was certainly an impressive performance, one that will undoubtedly help begin the process of getting people back to Kenan Stadium after the tumultuous past two seasons. But it was hardly the kind of outcome UNC can count on every week.

The good news for Mike Glennon and N.C. State is that there are still 11 games to go this season

By comparison, virtually anything Fedora and his team does this week against Wake Forest will inevitably seem like a letdown.

That’s an emotion that has already been felt by the Tar Heels’ rivals at N.C. State.

All the excitement and optimism that had been building all summer came crashing down in just 38 seconds late in the first quarter of Friday’s Chick-Fil-A Kickoff Classic opener against Tennessee.

That’s how long it took for the Volunteers to score 16 points on a pair of long touchdowns and a safety while exposing two of the Wolfpack’s greatest perceived strengths – a secondary led by All-America cornerback David Amerson and senior quarterback Mike Glennon – as potential weaknesses.

But like the coaches say, you’re never as good as think you look when you win and you’re never as bad as you think you look when you lose.

“Obviously we want to win them all,” Glennon said after the 35-21 loss. “Our goal is to win the conference championship and we still have all our conference games ahead of us. We’re going to learn from our mistakes and go from there.”

While that reality won’t ease the sting of a disappointing opening performance against a high-profile opponent, it does at least give the veteran Wolfpack hope that its forgettable night at the Georgia Dome was just that, one bad night.

And if the cliché holds true, like everyone else in the ACC and around the country, it can look forward to being a lot better this week than it was in Week 1.

[…] For better or for worse, it’s still only one game Anxious Tar Heels fans were more than just mildly excited about new coach Larry Fedora’s debut against Elon, a 62-0 massacre that showed off both the explosive potential of his spread offense and the playmaking possibilities of a rebuilt 4-2-5 hybrid defense. It was certainly an impressive performance. (Wilmington Star News) […]